Thirty miles due west of the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge lie a cluster of rocks called the Farallon Islands, 211-acres of inhospitable terrain in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Nineteenth century sailors called them "the Devil's Teeth." For three months every year--September to November--one of the world's largest and densest congregations of great white sharks assembles in the waters surrounding the islands. The remoteness of the islands has kept the white shark's habitat refreshingly pristine and explains why the Farallons are a great place for scientists to study the white shark.
Susan Casey's The Devil's Teeth is a fascinating account of her time as an "intern" with the members of the Farallon White Shark Project, about the only persons allowed on the islands, which are protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service. Casey was already a seasoned writer at the time she managed to get on the islands. Her book is part adventure, part natural history, and part travelogue. Casey does a fine job offering a rare and uncommercialized, unchummed glimpse into the lives and habitat of nature's most fearsome, fascinating, and mysterious predator.
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